August 2006: Flip Grater, Fuser, Jakob, Rebecca Le Harle, Solaa, Solstate

Frocks galore, a Valentine’s Day surprise, sushi of doom, muddy rock, misuse of an iron and a scenic plane ride.
Continue reading August 2006: Flip Grater, Fuser, Jakob, Rebecca Le Harle, Solaa, Solstate

Autozamm “Don’t Worry”

This is the premise: Autozamm are each suspended in a cage attached to a crane and are twirled around a city at night. It sounds like it could be a really amazing visual, but it just doesn’t work.

It’s all done with CGI and there’s no sense that Autozamm are literally being hurled around in cages. Rather, it looks like four dudes filmed in the comfort and safety of a green screen studio, superimposed onto the dizzying scene. Compare this with Goodshirt’s “Green” video, a classic in the “torture the band” genre. Even though the band members were essentially going about ordinary bathroom tasks, there was still no denying that they were all doing it hanging upside down. There’s no sense of this discomfort or indeed peril in the Autozamm video.

The night setting of the video seems to be done to remove the need for an elaborately animated city backdrop. When even the band members are shot in partial darkness, there’s so much less work required. Though, the familiar hilly Wellington skyline is still visible, possibly a nod to the $1500 grant from Positively Wellington Business’s Made In Wellington scheme.

40 years prior, the Mary Poppins film managed to create a more thrilling scene involving flying people. And – one might argue – with a better soundtrack.

Best bit: I dunno, the CGI buildings look like buildings?

Note: This video was previously available on MySpace but has since been removed.

Director: Ed Davis
Nga Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… street craps.

Gramsci “Code”

2005-gramsci-codeA common theme is emerging with Gramsci’s videos: he doesn’t like to be seen. With the exception of his first video, “Complicated”, all subsequent videos have shown Paul McLaney but kept him obscured with shadowy lighting and/or computer graphics effects. “Code” follows this aesthetic, with McLaney and band placed in a murky back and white world of boulders and skeletal trees.

The song has a really epic chorus, which would suggest a perfect opportunity for the band to rock out. Instead when the chorus hits, the ground beneath them collapses and they fall down a rocky shaft. It’s only when the calmer verses return that they’re allowed to return to solid ground.

And this solid ground leads various band members to a strange forest, a fancy train tunnel, a really long bridge and, eventually, an iceberg. The graphics remind me of something from a basic video game. But if it was a video game, it would be totally rubbish because nothing much happens.

When there’s a kick-arse rock chorus, I want see something more thrilling than a guy running along a footbridge for a minute.

Best bit: the shoe-grabbing tree roots, like arboreal chewing gum.

Director: Ed Davis

Next… tears of a clown.

Concord Dawn “Man for all Seasons”

2004-concord-dawn-man-for-all-seasonsThis Concord Dawn video was another recipient of the $1500 grant that Positively Wellington Business gave for the production of music videos in the Wellington region. And like the other recipients of the grant, the video doesn’t have an obvious Wellington setting (but behind the scenes is another matter).

“Man for all Seasons” is more of Concord Dawn’s drum and bass sound, with a few lyrics about a man who wasn’t believed. The video is set in a futuristic environment where a lone man is brought out of suspended animation to work on an “inhabitability survey”

He uses touch screens, which are annoying huge and require flamboyant arm gestures from a standing position, a la Minority Report. Contrast this with the iPad, which can be operated with just one finger and you don’t even need to get out of bed to use it. Concord Dawn’s future vision just seems like a recipe for RSI.

It’s a bit hard to figure out what’s going on, due to the low-res version of this video, but this is what I think is happening. The man is running simulation to figure out whether a planet will be inhabitable. The simulation shows the planet going from booming civilisation to crumbling ruins, so the guy gets all sad and returns to his pod. The video ends with the simulation continuing to run, showing a pleasant enviro city rising from the ruins. Well, that inhabitability survey was a bit of a mess.

Best bit: the random shot of the female in suspended animation, wearing a strapless top because future.

Director: Ed Davis
Nga Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… 1.2 litres of beer.

The Exiles “Hear The People”

The Exiles were the next project of Sean Strum after Eye TV called it a day. The band were described as “indie electro/rock” and had a harder sound than the popstastic Eye TV.

The video is a mix of animated backgrounds with live action people moving within them. Specifically, the Exiles are toiling in a prison, watched over by stern female prison guards all wearing tiny leather dominatrix suits because music video.

Life is tough in prison. The food is terrible, there’s only one basketball hoop for amusement, they’re on laundry duty. Black and white stripes is not the new black. Obviously the dudes must escape.

This requires an elaborate plan involving a huge amount of tunnelling, some distractions, and finally the dudes emerge from a muddy drainpipe onto a beach, all spotlessly clean. Waiting for them is an 18th century ship out in the harbour, which makes perfect sense in with the fantasy world logic of the video. Off you go, lads.

The video has various scenes pixellated out, presumedly because the content is too graphic. This includes a guard’s raised middle finger, a man being whipped, and a prisoner being injected with a hypodermic needle. Only the pixellation makes it look like someone is nudging the guy’s arm with their penis.

There’s a lot of goofy fun happening in this video, and the animated penitentiary is one of the most enjoyable animated videoes I’ve come across so far. The video won Best Director for Ed Davis at the 2005 Kodak Music Clip Awards.

Best bit: the various Wizard of Oz references, in both the lyrics and visuals.

Director: Ed Davis
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… industrialisation.

Baitercell & Schumacher “Lock & Load”

2004-baitercell-and-schumacher-lock-and-loadThe “Lock & Load” video takes inspiration from the song title and sets it in a world of guns, though of the video game variety. It’s set in an uncanny city intersection, with crude computer animation – just the sort of thing that would feature in a video game of the era.

Vocalist Bex plays the protagonist of the game and it’s a pretty simple game. Just her shooting people. There are lots of sound effects, mostly gunfire, and they threaten to dominate the video at the expense of the song. But then, as the song is a chaotic drum ‘n’ bass extravaganza, the gunfire does at least fit the mood.

Like the recent video for Tourist’s song “Do You Feel the Cold?”, this video was also the recipient of a $1500 grant from Positively Wellington Business to make the video in Wellington. So what do you do when the video is set in a fictitious, computer-generated world?

Well, all the building look Wellington-ish, the sort of Victorian style you see down the Courtenay Place end of town. And the buildings are decked out with the brands of local businesses – as well as obvious brands like Hell pizza, Red Bull and urban clothing retailer Spacesuit, there’s also the vegetarian cafe Pranah. Well, video game assassins can’t survive just on pizza and energy drinks.

The video feels a little bit messy, like they’ve created this video game world, but all there is to do with it is shoot the bad guys. Whereas real video games, well, they tend to be bit more sophisticated.

Best bit: the assassin shoots up a video shop. Not seen – the owner takes the insurance payout and retires before the home video market crashes.

Director: Ed Davis

Next… a cure for loneliness.

Misfits of Science “Mmmhmm”

I hate it when this happens. Misfits of Science had a bona fide hit with “Fools Love”. It was the number one single for a month and was just generally a cool tune with a fun video. Then along comes the follow-up single “MmmHmmm” and it’s… disappointing.

After a minute-long introduction, which involves a woman (well, a man in a wig) repeatedly being stabbed in a mock horror movie, the song starts. It’s all about going to the club (the song references 50 Cent’s “In Da Club”) and partying.

That in itself is perfectly ordinary, but the partially animated video makes the unpleasant choice of using women’s bodies as decoration. There’s a line of women dancing on the bar top. We can’t see their heads, which suggests the video doesn’t care about their identity as individuals. All that matters is having some legs and boobs dancing about. Worse still are the other headless women bending over in front of the camera, thrusting their bums or crotches in front of the camera. And – oh – there’s an animated beaver over one woman’s crotch.

In 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” video, his club-going shorties looked like they were enjoying themselves and were into him. This video seems like a teenage boy’s idea of what sex might be like. The dudes have no idea how to interact with actual hot babes so the video has to reduce the women to body parts. Boobs are simple; brains are hard.

It just makes me think that, actually, the Misfits of Science would have been really rubbish to go to a club with. But then, considering the song has an entire verse about a malodorous toilet experience, they’re not even trying to pimp themselves. Perhaps the only people they’re trying to impress are 13-year-old boys.

Best bit: the chicken right at the beginning, before the video starts to suck.

Director: Ed Davis
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… the markets revisited.

Autozamm “You Don’t Know Me”

2004-autozamm-you-dont-know-meIt’s the return of Autozamm and this time they’re found in an old gun emplacement, one of the ones constructed in anticipation of an enemy that never came. Never mind – Autozamm have brought their own conflict to the site.

The video starts with the band posing for a series of photos, then they start fighting. The entire video – which appears to have been shot in one continuous take – involves the band throwing choreographed punches, taking turns at beating each other up.

It’s been shot with all the punches thrown and lyrics lip-synched in a slowed down form, then adjusted in post-production to give the effect of a more urgent brawl. The thing is, none of the fighting looks real. The band members are obviously not being beaten up, and after a while it begins to look less like fighting and more like an elaborately choreographed performance art piece.

It’s like a trick. If the band members were wearing black leotards and performing on stage, most Autozamm fans wouldn’t be at all interested. But put them in jeans and t-shirts inside a bleak military setting and suddenly it’s all martial and cool.

The video also has heaps of YouTube comments from people who love the video. Particularly, there are comments from people who are fans of the editing software that let all the sped-up and slowed-down bits happen. In fact, most comments are about how technically brilliant the video is, with few comments on the song itself.

Best bit: that Mikee Autozamm is so hard that he brawls without removing his specs.

Director: Ed Davis
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a starry night.

Gramsci & Anika Moa “Don’t”

2003-gramsci-anika-moa-dontNeither Paul McLaney (aka Gramsci) nor Anika Moa feature in this video. Instead it’s a partially animated adventure involve a woman walking on a tightrope, a man holding the rope tight, and a sweeping panorama.

According the profile at Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, the “Don’t” video was filmed in an old church, using blue tarpaulins for a DIY chroma-key background (that didn’t even work properly), with the actress playing the showgirl doing all her tightrope walking on the floor.

The background is an animated fantasy version of Wellington, tall buildings, the wide harbour but also unfamiliar snow-capped peaks. As the camera swoops around the tightrope walker, the landscape changes. NZ On Screen also notes that the background was created from still images taken by director Ed Davis.

The background and highwire drama changes and intensifies with the song, an uneasy duet. The tightrope walker does flips and tricks which – even though it’s all fake – still create a splendid tension.

And with all that tension set up, it seems inevitable that the tightrope walker would fall. She does, whooshing through an ever-changing landscape, into the arms of the man who was holding her rope. Well, that’s a happy ending.

“Don’t” won best video at the 2003 New Zealand Music Video Awards.

Best bit: the artistic balancing, impressive even on the flat.

Director: Ed Davis
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… wake up, sheep and people.